Chapters: 8/9 Fandom: The X-Files Rating: Mature Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully Characters: Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Holman Hardt, Sheila Fontaine Additional Tags: MSR, Post-Episode: s06e08 The Rain King, Friends to Lovers, Tornados, Slow Burn

Following the trunk of the tree with her eyes, Scully saw it ran down into the rocky clay face of the gully wall. Its limbs were ancient, splintered and dry. And below where the dead tree reached out like a skeletal hand, the gully dropped away in a sheer plunge to a long-dry creek below, its bed littered with black boulders and scrubby weeds.

“Sheila!” she called. The air was suddenly eerily still, the wind no longer even stirring the branches. But there was no sound from the car. 

Beside her, Mulder was tearing off his jacket. Scully felt her heart drop as she whirled around to him and saw the intent on his face. 

“I can get to her,” he said. He pointed to where one of the dead branches fanned out from the trunk, jutting above the lip of the gully wall. “I’ll climb down, and get them out of there.”

“Oh God, Mulder…” Scully breathed. 

She couldn’t ask him not to try. 

She wouldn’t attempt to stop him. 

But her stomach heaved as she took in the open space below the tree’s feeble branches, and saw how precariously the car was settled among them.

Mulder looked at her, and she realised that until then, she’d never truly understood the notion of someone’s heart being in their eyes. In his gaze she saw emotion so pure it lifted something within her, even as she shrank from the thought of what he was about to attempt. There was hope there, unwavering determination. And love that blazed like a flame.

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